When we first announced last year that the Highlander movie series would be receiving a remake/reboot courtesy of Summit Entertainment, Gordon McAlpin’s source told him that the budget would be from $80 to $100 million USD. Now, it looks like part of that financing has been completely secured.
In his article at the Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision blog, Jay Fernandez wrote that RCR Media Group will be co-financing the project with Rui Costa Reis and Eliad Josephson as executive producers.
If you’ve never heard of RCR Media Group, then you must not watch a lot of of direct-to-DVD movies, of which RCR has produced plenty. Completed films on their slate include sequels or sound-a-likes to S.W.A.T., Stomp the Yard, and Wild Things, featuring veteran actors like Robert Patrick and Jasmine Guy, and pretty unknowns like Jillian Murray.
The script’s first pass was done by Iron Man co-writers Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, and Twilight screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg has also worked on it as well. With the remake’s director Justin Lin’s Fast Five still in the top three on the weekend box office charts, the additional bump to the budget could mean that the new Highlander could afford to hire some additional top quality talent.
Just as long as Christopher Lambert, Adrian Paul, or Peter Wingfield get cameos, right?
Why? Why? Why? Why?
The original was fun, but it wasn’t a great story. It really only worked because of its relative originality and the quirkiness of the cast and soundtrack. Even the TV show wasn’t good.
Here’s a too-long analogy: When you go on extended backpacking trips, eventually any food tastes great. On a mountain, I once ate Fig Newtons with Muenster cheese slices on them. They tasted so good, I mean so absolutely heavenly that I couldn’t believe that nobody had done it before. Much later, I decided to recreate it at home. It was not good. It was very not good. Only the fact that I was hungry, tired and sitting on a beautiful mountain in the winter made the meal awesome. My friends were not amused at my choice of party snack.
The remake of Highlander will be like that.
When you strip it down, it really is a great story with a basic premise that works on so many levels: Immortal becomes bored with being immortal and yet still clings to humanity as hard as he/she can. Hell, I think I just described a theme of Torchwood. Also, as much as I like to pooh-pooh on remakes, I remain optimistic that this one could be fun and bring something new to people who aren’t fans of the original movie or the TV series (and yes, they’re still out there).
You make good points and it is entirely possible it might not be horrible.
However, if the Fright Night and Conan trailers are any indication, the Highlander remake will have little to none of the fun and humor that played off of the pathos so well and kept the original film from being inordinately heavy.
It hasn’t even started production, though, and styles may change and it might work. I suppose for me it all comes down to the standard “Please make an original film”.